Culture

New Rochelle, NY, February 18, 2020--A new study has shown metformin - a glucose-lowering drug commonly used to treat diabetes - to be effective at lowering some measures of obesity in children and adolescents. The results of a systematic review and meta-analysis are published in Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the full-text article free on the Childhood Obesity website through March 18, 2020.

The article entitled "Metformin Therapy Reduces Obesity Indices in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials" was coauthored by Alireza Milajerdi, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (Iran) and colleagues from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and University of Utah (Salt Lake City). The researchers searched the medical literature for randomized clinical trials that examined the effects of metformin use on obesity measures in children and adolescents. Overall, they found significant reductions in body mass index (BMI), body weight, waist circumference, and fat mass, but not in lean body mass. However, the reductions in BMI and waist circumference were not significant in the youngsters who were overweight or obese.

"Metformin, a pharmaceutical, has been a staple in the treatment of diabetes. Some have been interested in whether this pharmaceutical might also reduce body fat," says Childhood Obesity Editor-in-Chief Tom Baranowski, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. "Alereza Sadeghi and colleagues found 38 articles that tested this relationship among children and adolescents. Their important findings need to be explored in additional research, especially why metformin did not affect adiposity in some groups. These findings could be an early step in establishing the clinical use of metformin for weight management in children.""

In a study published in the American Heart Association scientific journal Circulation, Kaiser Permanente research scientists report a steady decline in heart attacks for both men and women enrolled in the health system from 2000 to 2014, although that rate of decline slowed among women in the last 5 years of the study.

"The study points to the need for continued improvement in the awareness, prevention, recognition, and treatment of risk factors for heart disease in women," said Kristi Reynolds, PhD, MPH, the senior author on the study and the director of Epidemiologic Research with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation. "It also shows that more research needs to be done to understand the disparities between men and women."

The study was based on 45,331 hospitalizations for heart attacks occurring in patients who were ages 35 years and older within Kaiser Permanente in Southern California between 2000 and 2014.

This research showed the rate of heart attacks:

Declined overall by nearly 50% between 2000 and 2014

Declined among men during the study period by about 4.7% annually

Declined among women from 2000 to 2008 by about 4.6% annually

Declined among women from 2009 to 2014 by about 2.3% annually

Men have roughly double the risk for heart attack hospitalization compared to women in the United States, although several studies have reported increasing rates of hospitalization for heart attacks among women under the age of 55 years. Heart attacks are the leading cause of death for women.

The study did not determine why the decline in heart attacks was not as great among women.

Researchers said the overall declines in heart attacks reflect a national trend of decreasing heart attack rates and may be due in part to increased use of medications, such as statins, and lifestyle changes.

The heart attack trends at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California may not be generalizable to the United States because the organization has had systemic programs in place to reduce cardiovascular disease since 2001. Systemwide care initiatives resulted in large improvements in cardiovascular health risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol control that exceeded the improvements observed in most other health care systems.

"We are very proud the rate of heart attacks continues to decline among men and women within Kaiser Permanente Southern California," said study co-author Ronald Scott, MD, a family physician at the Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center, and the cardiovascular co-lead for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group.

Most heart attacks and strokes are preventable, Dr. Scott said.

"And we want to continue the trend of lowering the rate of heart attacks among both men and women by prescribing statins as a preventive medication and continuing to recommend lifestyle changes such as improved diet and exercise," he said.

Matthew Mefford, PhD, the lead author on the research, suggested that the takeaway message from the research is that women especially should talk with their doctors to find out what they can do to reduce their risk of heart attacks.

AMES, Iowa - Fingerprints are telling us more and more about the people that left them behind.

Sure, we all know the unique whorls, loops and arches in a print can identify a person. But now researchers are studying how the natural and environmental compounds within them can also offer clues about a person's lifestyle, gender and ethnicity.

But even as researchers discover new information in fingerprints, they still hadn't found a way to determine a basic fact about a print: How old is it?

That's information that could potentially tie a suspect to a crime scene.

And that's information chemists at Iowa State University are beginning to provide.

What happened to the unsaturated oils?

Paige Hinners was using a computer algorithm to objectively analyze the degradation and spread of fingerprint ridges over time - potentially a way to determine the age of a fingerprint - when she noticed something else in her data. The unsaturated fatty oils in a fingerprint were disappearing from her measurements.

"If we're losing them, where are they going?" asked Hinners, who in December completed her doctorate in analytical chemistry at Iowa State and now works as a senior chemist for Ames-based Renewable Energy Group Inc. She worked on the fingerprint project while she was a graduate student in the research group of Young-Jin Lee, a professor of chemistry at Iowa State. Madison Thomas, a former Iowa State undergraduate student, also assisted with the project.

Eventually the research group found answers: As the unsaturated fats - triacylglycerols, to be exact - disappeared from the data, other compounds resulting from reactions with ozone - or ozonolysis - started showing up.

That led to numerous trials and steps to confirm that ozone was causing the degradation of the unsaturated fats in fingerprints. And that led to the conclusion that, with more study, this could turn into a useful tool to determine the age of a fingerprint.

The Iowa State chemists' discovery was recently published online by the research journal Analytical Chemistry and is featured on a supplementary cover of the current print edition.

The paper describes how the chemists used a tool called matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging. It's technology that uses a laser to analyze compounds left on a surface then records the mass and electrical charge of each component within a sample, such as the various oils in a fingerprint. The imaging tool allowed the chemists to track the degradation of unsaturated oils due to reaction with ozone in the air.

How precise is the technique?

"Right now, we can measure the number of days (since a print was left)," Hinners said. "It's easy to tell one-day old from fresh. There's no doubt about that."

The chemists also tested whether the powder used to make fingerprints visible would affect the ability of mass spectrometry to analyze fingerprint degradation and aging. It turned out the powder did not affect the researchers' ability to collect data and determine fingerprint aging.

'This might be the way'

Lee described the study - which was supported by a $362,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice - as a proof-of-concept project. And so the testing was limited to fingerprints from three people.

The data did show individual differences in the amount of unsaturated oils in fingerprints and the rate of reaction with ozone and resulting degradation, he said. So more study is needed to understand the different levels of fatty oils individuals have and how that would affect degradation. The researchers are also looking at how environmental factors such as humidity could affect reactions with ozone.

A new $516,800 grant from the National Institute of Justice will keep the fingerprint-aging study going. The grant will also allow the researchers to study how fatty oils in fingerprints could offer clues about a person's health and other characteristics.

Though the technique for determining fingerprint aging needs more study, Lee said the concept has been proven:

"We can measure decomposition of unsaturated triacylglycerols as a function of time," he said. "We've studied the mechanisms and proved what's happening. By measuring how fast it's decaying, we can come up with an idea of how old it is."

The most exciting part of the project, which began by looking in a different direction?

"When we reproduced this with each person, it was fairly consistent," said Hinners, who still serves as a resource for Lee's research group. "And so we learned this might actually tell us how old a fingerprint actually is. This might be the way - that's exciting."

TORONTO, ON - A team of researchers at the University of Toronto has successfully tested a new strategy for identifying genetic resources critical for the ongoing battle against plant pathogens such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses that infect and destroy food crops worldwide.

"As much as 40 per cent of global crop yield annually is lost to pests and pathogens such as bacteria, viruses and other disease-causing microorganisms," said David Guttman, a professor in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology (CSB) at the University of Toronto and co-author of a study published in Science. "In Canada, pathogens of the top five crops cause annual losses of approximately CDN $3.2B, even with no significant outbreaks."

By focusing on the near limitless arsenal of disease-associated genes available to pathogens, and the defences available to plants, they not only uncovered new insights into the ways plants survive relentless attacks, they developed a blueprint that could one day be used to protect the health of any species grown for food production.

"We wanted to know how relatively long-lived plants defend themselves against very rapidly evolving disease-causing pathogens, why disease is so uncommon even while plants are under continual attack by these highly diverse pathogens, and why domesticated crop species are so much more susceptible to pathogen attacks than wild species," said Guttman.

Guttman and fellow CSB professor Darrell Desveaux, who co-led the study, addressed these questions by specifically asking how a single plant is able to fight off the attacks of a common, bacterial, crop pathogen. They did this by first characterizing the global diversity of an important class of pathogen proteins, called effectors.

"Effectors play key roles in disease since they evolved to enhance the ability of pathogens to attack and infect their hosts. Fortunately, plants have evolved counter-defenses in the form of immune receptors that can recognize certain effectors," said Desveaux. "A plant is able to mount an 'effector-triggered' immune response that usually stops the infection, if it carries a specific immune receptor that recognizes a specific pathogen effector. This effector-receptor interaction has been called gene-for-gene resistance, and is the basis for nearly all agricultural resistance breeding."

The team started by sequencing the genomes of approximately 500 strains of the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae (P. syringae), which causes disease on nearly every major crop species.

"From these bacterial genomes we identified approximately 15,000 effectors from 70 distinct families," said Guttman. "We then reduced this complexity by identifying 530 effectors that represent their global diversity."

The researchers next had all of these representative effectors synthesized and put into a particularly harmgul strain of P. syringae that causes disease when infecting the plant Arabidopsis thaliana (A. thaliana), a common weed widely used in plant biology studies. By doing infections with each individual effector they saw how many of the 530 effectors elicited an effector-triggered immune response that protected the plant.

The results were unexpected.

"We found that over 11% of the effectors elicited immune response, and that almost 97% of all P. syringae strains carry at least one immune-eliciting effector," said Desveaux. "We also identified new plant immune receptors that recognize these effectors, and found that almost 95% of all P. syringae strains can be blocked by just two A. thaliana immune receptors."

The results shed new light on how plants survive relentless pathogen attack. They also provide an exciting new approach for identifying new plant immune receptors, which is a genetic resource in short supply in agricultural breeding.

"While wild plant species have a diverse array of immune receptors, most domesticated crop species have lost much of this immunodiversity due to intensive artificial selection," said Guttman. "Our approach enables the rapid identification of new immune receptors in wild relatives of crops that can then be moved into elite agricultural lines by traditional breeding, ultimately creating new varieties with greater ability to resist agricultural pathogens."

TAMPA, Fla. (February 18, 2020)- For many adults, the mid-30's is a busy time. There's often career advancement, the start of a new family and associated responsibilities. It's also a critical time for how we diversify our days in order to stay up to speed. A new study from the University of South Florida (USF) finds a key piece to maintaining cognitive function throughout adulthood is to engage in diverse activities regularly.

Researchers focused on seven common daily activities: paid work, time with children, chores, leisure, physical activity, volunteering, and giving informal help. They reviewed two sets of data from 732 people ranging between the ages of 34 and 84 that was collected by the National Survey of Daily Experiences. Every day for eight consecutive days, each participant was asked if they partook in those activities and scored on an activity diversity score that captures both the breadth (variety) and evenness (consistency) of activity participation. The same group was queried ten years later. The study published in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences found those who increased activity diversity over the decade exhibited higher levels of cognitive functioning than those who maintained lower or decreased activity diversity.

Their cognitive functioning was assessed using the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT) battery, which measures multiple dimensions of cognition, including working memory span, verbal fluency, attention, speed of processing, reasoning and verbal memory. Previous studies have examined how activity variety and frequency impact cognition. This is the first study to prove activity consistency is also essential, regardless of age.

"Results support the adage to 'use it or lose it' and may inform future interventions targeting the promotion of active lifestyles to include a wide variety of activities for their participants," said Soomi Lee, PhD, assistant professor in the USF College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. "Findings suggest that active and engaged lifestyles with diverse and regular activities are essential for our cognitive health."

Daily engagement results in greater accumulation of intellectual and social repertoires. Life experiences, such as educational attainment or leisure activities, can help compensate for progressing Alzheimer's Disease. Conversely, a lack of activities or passive behavior, like binge watching TV, is associated with cognitive decline. While participants did keep their minds sharp, Lee says she did not find a correlation between activity diversity and episodic memory, which is known to decline with age. A previous study by Lee also shows that activity diversity is important for psychological well-being, especially for older adults. The current study shows that activity diversity matters for cognitive health across age groups and an active lifestyle is important for different domains of health.

Anxiety disorders such as phobias and PTSD are fairly common problems in society. One of the prime causes of anxiety disorders is the inability to overcome the fear for certain contexts when they no longer apply. Attempts to facilitate this process of overcoming fear, therefore, has been the focus of recent efforts to treat anxiety disorders. These efforts have culminated in the discovery that certain opioid compounds, called delta opioid receptor (DOP) agonists, assist in masking fear memory. Consequently, DOP agonists have been at the center of clinical explorations in this area over the last decade.

In the thick of such clinical explorations, scientists from the Tokyo University of Science and the University of Tsukuba, Japan, led by Professor Akiyoshi Saitoh, first discovered the depression- and anxiety-relieving effects of DOP agonists. Subsequently, in a new study published inNeuropharmacology in 2019, they explored the potential of these agonists to help in the fear memory masking process. "We looked at the effects of DOP agonists on anxiety and fear memory, which have not been sufficiently studied so far," explains Prof Saitoh.

Prof Saitoh and team applied the "fear conditioning test" to mice in their laboratory. On day 1 of their experiment, they placed the mice in conditioning chambers and inflicted footshock on them at regular intervals. This was designed to induce fear for the chamber in the mice, who would henceforth associate the chamber with painful footshocks. On day 2, the mice were given either saline ("control" group), KNT-127, or SNC80 (both DOP agonists) and released into the conditioning chamber once again. They were not given any more footshocks. On day 3, they were given no drugs or saline but re-exposed to the conditioning chamber, to test their fear memory--or whether they remembered to be afraid. When mice are afraid, they freeze. On day 2, the mice on both drugs showed significantly less "freezing" behavior. On day 3, the mice on KNT-127 showed reduced freezing behavior, but those on SNC80 did not.

The scientists also examined the effects of these drugs on the activities of enzymes and pathways in the brain that are known to drive the masking of fear memory. They found that KNT-127 increased the levels of "phosphorylated" (or activated) molecules of an enzyme called ERK, which is involved in the ability to overcome fear conditioning in certain parts of the brain.

Taken together, these results suggest that although both KNT-127 and SNC80 reduce conditioned fear, only KNT-127 helps suppress contextual fear memory. Further, KNT-127 performs this role by increasing the levels of phosphorylated ERK in certain parts of the brain. So, both drugs reduce anxiety in the case of conditioned fear but do so via different pathways in the brain.

These observations and inferences are based on mice in a laboratory, but they clearly suggest new therapeutic possibilities for people. Prof Saitoh and Dr. Yamada say, "the fear conditioning test used in this study is also a model of PTSD. PTSD is a psychiatric disorder in which the memory (trauma) of anxiety and fear once experienced cannot be forgotten and thus impairs daily life, causing problems like insomnia and withdrawal. At present, the widely prescribed medication for PTSD takes several weeks to have therapeutic effects and is not satisfactory. There are also no potential breakthrough therapies for such disorders. Our study shows that DOP agonists, when used in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy, can enhance the efficacy of treatment for anxiety disorders. It offers hope for the realization of a safe and effective new mode of therapy for PTSD and other related psychiatric disorders."

"And the Lord delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel, which took it on the second day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls therein..." -Joshua, 10:32

The Biblical Book of Joshua tells the story of the ancient Israelites' entry into the Promised Land after a 40-year sojourn in the desert. Now, a team of archaeologists led by Professor Yosef Garfinkel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology and Professor Michael Hasel at Southern Adventist University in Tennessee, have opened a window onto the Canaanite society that inhabited the land during that era.

In a study published last month in Levant, Garfinkel and his co-authors revealed, for the first time ever, extensive ruins of a Canaanite temple dating to the 12th century BCE that they uncovered in National Park Tel Lachish, a large Bronze Age-era settlement near the present-day Israeli city of Kiryat Gat.

Lachish was one of the most important Canaanite cities in the Land of Israel during the Middle and late Bronze Ages; its people controlled large parts of the Judean lowlands. The city was built around 1800 BCE and later destroyed by the Egyptians around 1550 BCE. It was rebuilt and destroyed twice more, succumbing for good around 1150 BCE. The settlement is mentioned in both the Bible and in various Egyptian sources and was one of the few Canaanite cities to survive into the 12th century BCE.

"This excavation has been breath-taking," shared Garfinkel. "Only once every 30 or 40 years do we get the chance to excavate a Canaanite temple in Israel. What we found sheds new light on ancient life in the region. It would be hard to overstate the importance of these findings."

The layout of the temple is similar to other Canaanite temples in northern Israel, among them Nablus, Megiddo and Hazor. The front of the compound is marked by two columns and two towers leading to a large hall. The inner sanctum has four supporting columns and several unhewn "standing stones" that may have served as representations of temple gods. The Lachish temple is more square in shape and has several side rooms, typical of later temples including Solomon's Temple.

In addition to these archaeological ruins, the team unearthed a trove of artifacts including, bronze cauldrons, Hathor-inspired jewellery, daggers and axe-heads adorned with bird images, scarabs, and a gold-plated bottle inscribed with the name Ramses II, one of Egypt's most powerful pharaohs. Near the temple's holy of holies, the team found two bronze figurines. Unlike the winged cherubs in Solomon's Temple, the Lachish figurines were armed "smiting gods".

Of particular interest was a pottery sherd engraved with ancient Canaanite script. There, the letter "samek" appears, marked by an elongated vertical line crossed by three perpendicular shorter lines. This makes it the oldest known example of the letter and a unique specimen for the study of ancient alphabets.

Only time will tell what treasures still remain to be uncovered in the ancient city of Lachish.

Since its launch in San Francisco in 2010, Uber has experienced phenomenal growth, reaching six continents, more than 70 countries, and 700 cities through 2018. Whilst it took Uber roughly six years to reach the 1 billion ride milestone (March 2016), it took just two and a half more years (September 2018) to reach 10 billion total rides.

Professor David Kirk from the University of Oxford's Department of Sociology and Nuffield College said: 'Ride-hailing is a private sector intervention that may have transformative potential to change the nature of road safety worldwide, yet there has been relatively little research on the potentially beneficial and detrimental effects of ride-hailing for public safety. Our study presents the very first findings of the association between the deployment of Uber and road accident injuries in the UK, thereby adding much needed research to the public debate about the safety of ride-hailing.'

The study, a collaboration between researchers at Oxford, Bocconi University, and the University of California-Davis, exploited differences in the timing of the deployment of Uber across Britain to test the association between the advent of Uber's services and rate of fatal and non-fatal accidents in those areas.

In Great Britain, road accident fatalities and injuries have steadily declined since the mid-1960s, due in part to efforts to improve road and vehicle safety and limit the extent of drink-driving. Yet progress on reducing road fatalities as well as serious injuries stalled in recent years and even began to reverse course, with serious injuries increasing nearly 12% from 2014 to 2018. Along with suicide and drug overdose, traffic fatalities are among the leading causes of death of 15 to 29 year olds in the UK, as well as worldwide.

Professor Kirk said: 'Expanding the availability and lowering the cost of alternate transportation options should, in theory, reduce the number of drink-driving occurrences and fatalities. Conversely, Uber may actually increase road accidents by increasing the number of vehicles and vehicle miles travelled on Great Britain's roads.'

Kirk, with colleagues Nicolo Cavalli (Bocconi) and Noli Brazil (UC-Davis), found that slight injuries (sprains and bruises) declined outside of London after the rollout of Uber, but increased within London. No statistically significant association between Uber and traffic fatalities was observed.

Professor Kirk said: 'One interpretation for the decline in serious road injuries is that Uber may be a substitute form of transportation for risky drivers, including drink-drivers. However, ride-hailing is also a substitute for public transit, particularly buses, thereby increasing traffic congestion.

'Our next step is to examine the effect on road traffic accidents following the withdrawal of Uber in cities such as London, where the provider may have lost its licence to operate. We also want to examine the effects of Uber and other ride-hailing competitors in countries besides the US and UK, given that most of the ride-hailing market is in Asia.'

One of the frustrations with anti-cancer therapy is that no one drug fits all: Most work well in some people but have little effect in other patients with the same type of cancer. This is as true of the newer immunotherapy treatments as it is of older types of chemotherapy. Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have now identified new markers that can help predict which patients have a better chance for a positive response to immunotherapy treatments. Their findings were reported in Nature Communications.

For Prof. Yardena Samuels and her research group partnered with Prof. Eytan Ruppin's lab in the National Institutes of Health (USA), basing their research on the understanding that learning to predict which treatments are most likely to work is the first step to creating a personalized approach to curing cancer. The focus of their work is melanoma - a collection of skin cancers that are often hard to treat, and which may be made up of varied tumor cells containing hundreds of different mutations. A certain percentage of melanomas have in recent years been successfully treated with immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors, which work by removing internal "obstacles" that trip up the body's own immune system and keep it from attacking the cancer. Unfortunately, for others, these drugs remain ineffective.

To understand the differences in response between different people, the research team, led by postdoctoral fellow Dr. Shelly Kalaora in Samuels' group and Joo Sang Li in the Ruppin group, first analyzed data from 470 melanoma patients that has been made available in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). They were particularly interested in differences in survival rates of patients in whom particular subunits of "immunoproteasomes" are overexpressed compared to those with low expression of these subunits. These are a variation on the proteasome subunits normally expressed in most cells (except for immune cells). Proteasomes are protein complexes that function as "cutters," reducing long proteins to short pieces called peptides. These peptides are later presented on the cells' surface by molecules called human leucocyte antigens (HLA). HLA peptides are basically bits of "information" - small molecules displayed on the outsides of cells - that "report" about new threats that the immune system needs to assess and address.

The immunoproteasome is assembled out of altered subunits and thus produces a unique collection of HLA peptides. The team thought that a particular change and overexpression in the HLA peptide repertoire might result in better recognition of the tumor cells by the immune system and thus better elimination of cancer cells.

To test this idea, the researchers cultured lines of tumor cells from melanoma patients in which they overexpressed the immunoproteasome subunits and identified the HLA peptides presented in each situation. By testing the response of the immune cells from the same patients, they showed that the newly formed HLA peptides were indeed more reactive compared to the HLA peptides presented by cells without this overexpression.

Could two subunits the research identified in particular and the unique HLA-bound peptides these produce be a predictor of immunotherapy success? The experiments showed that in tumor cells in which the subunits were overexpressed, the various immune system components that directly fight the cancer were more prevalent and more active than average. Indeed, looking back at the details of cancer patients in the database, the team reported that the expression levels of the two subunits were excellent predictors of the outcome - better than the tumor mutational burden, a biomarker that is currently used in the clinic. The researchers in Samuels's and Ruppin's lab suggest that expression of the immunoproteasome may be used as a biomarker for predicting better outcomes in melanoma and, together with mutational load testing, may improve patient matching to currently available immunotherapy.

Policies regulating fishing in international waters do not sufficiently protect officials who monitor illegal fishing, the prohibited dumping of equipment, or human trafficking or other human rights abuses, finds a new analysis by a team of environmental researchers.

"These fisheries observers risk their lives to watch over industrial fishing activities, and yet they are often not afforded sufficient legal safeguards," says Jennifer Jacquet, an associate professor in New York University's Department of Environmental Studies and a co-author of the study. "If we are serious about protecting ocean life, we must first put policies in place to protect fisheries observers."

The analysis, co-authored with the nonprofit Greenpeace and the Association of Professional Observers, appears in the journal Marine Policy.

There are an estimated 2,500 observers globally, and in recent years many have been subject to human rights and safety violations, including intimidation, assault, and even murder or disappearance under suspicious circumstances. The researchers add that since 2010, at least seven fisheries observers have disappeared while monitoring fisheries under the authority of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs). Notably, very little information is available regarding the circumstances.

This first-ever examination of observer-related policies for the 17 RFMOs, which are the main institutions in charge of high seas fisheries, uncovered several important gaps and shortcomings:

No RFMOs include regulations to sufficiently protect fisheries observer rights and safety.

Only four of 17 RFMOs, which manage high seas fisheries, have a policy in place on what to do if a human observer disappears or dies.

Only three RFMOs mandate 100-percent observer coverage on fishing vessels under their authority.

To address these shortcomings, the authors advocate for 100-percent observer coverage achieved using a complementary approach of remote electronic monitoring and human observers. They also call for RFMOs to be publicly transparent about what the monitoring reveals, including violations, and, especially, if observers are harmed or disappear.

"Requiring full observer coverage and protecting the safety and rights of human observers will lead to stronger environmental and animal protection on the high seas," says Jacquet.

South American volcano showing early warning signs of 'potential collapse', research shows

One of South America's most prominent volcanoes is producing early warning signals of a potential collapse, new research has shown.

Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador - known locally as "The Black Giant" - is displaying the hallmarks of flank instability, which could result in a colossal landslide.

New research, led by Dr James Hickey from the Camborne School of Mines, has suggested that the volcano's recent activity has led to significant rapid deformation on the western flank.

The researchers believe that the driving force causing this deformation could lead to an increased risk of the flank collapsing, causing widespread damage to the surrounding local area.

The research recommends the volcano should be closely monitored to watch for stronger early warning signs of potential collapse.

The study is published in the journal Earth & Planetary Science Letters.

Dr Hickey, who is based at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus, Cornwall, said: "Using satellite data we have observed very rapid deformation of Tungurahua's west flank, which our research suggests is caused by imbalances between magma being supplied and magma being erupted".

Tungurahua volcano has a long history of flank collapse, and has also been frequently active since 1999. The activity in 1999 led to the evacuation of 25,000 people from nearby communities.

A previous eruption of Tungurahua, around 3,000 years ago, caused a prior, partial collapse of the west flank of the volcanic cone.

This collapse led to a wide-spread debris avalanche of moving rock, soil, snow and water that covered 80 square kilometres - the equivalent of more than 11,000 football fields.

Since then, the volcano has steadily been rebuilt over time, peaking with a steep-sided cone more than 5000 m in height.

However, the new west flank, above the site of the 3000 year old collapse, has shown repeated signs of rapid deformation while the other flanks remain stable.

The new research has shown that this deformation can be explained by shallow, temporary magma storage beneath the west flank. If this magma supply is continued, the sheer volume can cause stress to accumulate within the volcanic cone - and so promote new instability of the west flank and its potential collapse.

Dr Hickey added: "Magma supply is one of a number of factors that can cause or contribute to volcanic flank instability, so while there is a risk of possible flank collapse, the uncertainty of these natural systems also means it could remain stable. However, it's definitely one to keep an eye on in the future."

DARIEN, IL -- A study published online as an accepted paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that later school start times were associated with a significant drop in vehicle accidents involving teen drivers.

Researchers analyzed motor vehicle accident statistics involving adolescents in Fairfax County, Virginia, for two school years before and after the implementation of later school start times. Results show that the crash rate in 16-to-18-year-old licensed drivers decreased significantly from 31.63 to 29.59 accidents per 1,000 drivers after the delayed start time. In contrast, the teen crash rate remained steady throughout the rest of the state.

"Accidental injuries including motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of deaths of adolescents in the U.S., and anything we can do to mitigate that risk should be considered," said senior study author Dr. Judith Owens, MPH, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of sleep medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. "We know from independent data sources that after a change in school start times students get more sleep, which leads to multiple benefits, not just for individuals but also in terms of huge economic implications."

The study compared motor vehicle crash rates among adolescents in the differing school start times in Fairfax County, which in the fall of 2015 pushed back school start times by 50 minutes from 7:20 a.m. to 8:10 a.m. Data also were compared to teenage crashes in the rest of the state, where school start times did not change. The analysis also found that the later school start time was associated with a lower rate of distraction-related accidents.

"Teenagers who get more sleep are less likely to make poor decisions such as not wearing a seat belt or engaging in distracted driving," explained Owens. "One of the potential mechanisms for this reduction in car crashes is a decrease in behaviors that are related to risk-taking."

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine supports middle and high school start times of 8:30 a.m. or later to promote teen health, safety and academic performance. The AASM's school start time position statement is based on scientific evidence that teenagers experience changes to their internal circadian rhythms and biological sleep drive that result in later sleep and wake times. A delayed school start time offers several benefits:

There will be a greater likelihood that teens will get enough sleep on school nights.

Students will be more alert to achieve peak classroom performance.

Reduced tardiness and absences will improve opportunities for learning.

Students will experience better mental health and psychological well-being.

Teen driving safety will improve.

The AASM recommends that 13-to-18-year-olds sleep 8 to 10 hours a day. Owens hopes her study will incentivize other school districts to examine school start times and their relationship to other safety issues beyond car crashes, such as sports-related injuries in student athletes.

"When schools start too early, students are being asked to wake up and function at a time when their circadian rhythm is telling them to stay asleep," she said. "Changing school start times not only allows students to get more sleep but allows them to sleep at the optimal time. When they sleep may be equally important, if not more so, than how much sleep they get."

New Rochelle, NY, February 18, 2020--A new research study provides novel insights into community-level predictors of lifetime substance use among a sample of 2678 sexual minority adolescents. Community LGBTQ supportiveness was found to be associated with lower odds of lifetime illegal drug use for sexual minority boys and girls and lower odds of lifetime marijuana use and smoking for girls. Living in a large population center was related to lower odds of lifetime alcohol use for boys. However, a progressive political climate was related to higher odds of lifetime marijuana use for girls. The importance of community contexts for substance use among sexual minority adolescents is investigated in an article published in LGBT Health, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the LGBT Health website through March 18, 2020.

The article, "Associations Between Community-Level LGBTQ-Supportive Factors and Substance Use Among Sexual Minority Adolescents," was authored by Ryan J. Watson, PhD, University of Connecticut (Storrs) and colleagues from The University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), the University of Maryland (College Park), San Diego State University (CA), and the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis). British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey data and primary community-level data were used to examine associations between community and school LGBTQ supportiveness, as well as population size and political climate of the communities surrounding the schools, and lifetime substance use (alcohol, illegal drugs, marijuana, non-medical use of prescription drugs, and smoking).

"The study suggests that the availability of a variety of LGBTQ community resources lowers the odds of substance use for sexual minority adolescents by creating a climate of greater acceptance. It adds to accumulating evidence linking community openness and inclusiveness to LGBTQ health," states LGBT Health Editor-in-Chief William Byne, MD, PhD, Columbia University, New York, NY.

ADELPHI, Md. (Feb. 18, 2020) -- A new algorithm is enabling deep learning that is more collaborative and communication-efficient than traditional methods.

Army researchers developed algorithms that facilitate distributed, decentralized and collaborative learning capabilities among devices, avoiding the need to pool all data at a central server for learning.

"There has been an exponential growth in the amount of data collected and stored locally on individual smart devices," said Dr. Jemin George, an Army scientist at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory. "Numerous research efforts as well as businesses have focused on applying machine learning to extract value from such massive data to provide data-driven insights, decisions and predictions."

However, none of these efforts address any of the issues associated with applying machine learning to a contested, congested and constrained battlespace, George said. These battlespace constraints become more apparent when the devices are using deep learning algorithms for decision-making due to the heavy computational costs in terms of learning time and processing power.

"This research tries to address some of the challenges of applying machine learning, or deep learning, in military environments," said Dr. Prudhvi Gurram, a scientist who contributed to this research. "Early indications and warnings of threats enhance situational awareness and contribute to how the Army evolves and adapts to defeat adversarial threats."

The researchers presented their findings at the 34th Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference on Artificial Intelligence in New York. A pre-print version of the paper is online (see Related Links below).

In an earlier study (see Related Links below), the researchers demonstrated that the distributed deep learning algorithms can yield the same performance as the typical centralized learning algorithms without aggregating the data at a single, central location, while decreasing the learning time linearly with the number of devices or agents involved in distributed learning.

"Distributed learning algorithms typically require numerous rounds of communication among the agents or devices involved in the learning process to share their current model with the rest of the network," George said. "This presents several communication challenges."

The Army researchers developed a new technique to significantly decrease the communication overhead, by up to 70% in certain scenarios, without sacrificing the learning rate or performance accuracy.

The researchers developed a triggering mechanism, which allowed the individual agents to communicate their model with their neighbors only if it has significantly changed since it was last transmitted. Though this significantly decreases the communication interaction among the agents, it does not affect the overall learning rate or the performance accuracy of the final learned model, George said.

Army researchers are investigating how this research can be applied to the Internet of Battlefield Things, incorporating quantized and compressed communication schemes to the current algorithm to further reduce the communication overhead.

The Army's modernization priorities include next-generation computer networks (see Related Links below), which enable the Army to deliver leader-approved technology capabilities to warfighters at the best possible return on investment for the Army.

Future efforts will evaluate the algorithm behavior on larger, military-relevant datasets using the computing resources available through the U.S. Army AI Innovation Institute, with the algorithm expected to transition to run on edge devices, George said.

In 1900, German physician Paul Ehrlich came up with the notion of a "magic bullet." The basic idea is to inject a patient with smart particles capable of finding, recognizing, and treating a disease. Medicine has pursued the magic bullet ever since.

Russian researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Prokhorov General Physics Institute, RAS, have made headway toward that goal. Led by MIPT's Maxim Nikitin, the team published a paper in ACS Nano (impact factor: 13.903), presenting a smart material with unique properties, which holds promise for express DNA analysis and next-generation drugs against cancer and other serious diseases.

Delivering medications to the cells affected by a disease is a major bottleneck in diagnostics and therapy. The drugs should ideally reach the pathogenic cells only, without doing any harm to the healthy ones. There are a range of marker compounds that give away cancer cells. Among these telltale molecules, found on the surface of the affected cells or in their microenvironment, are waste products and those sent to other cells as signals.

Modern drugs rely on one such marker to identify sick cells. However, it is usually the case that healthy cells carry the same markers, albeit in smaller quantities. This means the existing targeted drug delivery systems are not perfect. To make drug delivery more specific, smart materials are required that are capable of analyzing multiple environment parameters at once, seeking out the target with a greater precision.

"The conventionally used methods for drug delivery are like sending a letter with the city and street written on the envelope, but without the house and apartment numbers," principal investigator and the head of MIPT's Nanobiotechnology Lab Maxim Nikitin commented. "We need to be able to analyze more parameters to ensure effective delivery."

Previously, Nikitin and co-authors developed nano- and microparticles capable of conducting complex logic computations via biochemical reactions. In their 2014 paper in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers reported that their autonomous nanocomputers could analyze many parameters of a target and were therefore much better at its identification.

The past few years have seen many advances in biocomputing materials. By 2018, hundreds upon hundreds of papers had been published on the subject. Chemical Reviews, the field's most reputable journal with an impact factor of 54.301, published a review of contemporary nanorobotics and biocomputing. The paper, with the subtitle "Dawn of Theranostic Nanorobots," was authored by researchers from MIPT's Nanobiotechnology Lab and the Biophotonics Lab of Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).

Despite the efforts of numerous research teams around the world trying to expand the functionality of biocomputing materials, they are still not sensitive enough to disease markers, rendering practical applications impossible.

The recent paper of the team in ACS Nano marks a breakthrough in this field. They have developed a unique smart material characterized by supersensitivity to DNA signals. It is several orders of magnitude more sensitive than the closest competitor. Moreover, the new material exhibits a higher sensitivity than that of the vast majority of currently available express DNA assays.

The researchers achieved that remarkable result after they discovered that DNA molecules exhibit unusual behavior on the surface of nanoparticles.

In the study, one end of a single-stranded DNA molecule was pinned to a nanoparticle. Importantly, the molecule had no hairpins -- that is, double-stranded segments where part of the chain sticks to itself. The team outfitted the other end of the DNA chain with a small molecular receptor. Contrary to expectations, the receptor did not bind its target. After ruling out a mistake, the scientists hypothesized that single-stranded DNA might stick to the nanoparticle and coil up, hiding the receptor beneath it, on the particle's surface (fig. 1, left).

The hypothesis proved right when the team added complementary single strands of DNA to their particle (fig. 1, right). The receptor instantly became active, binding its target. This happened because the bonds between the complementary nucleotides caused the two DNA strands to form a rigid double helix, or duplex. Like a chameleon's tongue, the strand uncoiled, exposing the receptor for target binding.

Such uncoiling of the DNA strand resembles that of a molecular beacon (fig. 2, top). This refers to a single-stranded DNA whose one end forms a duplex with the opposite end, folding up the structure. A complementary strand of DNA can unfold the beacon. However, there is a significant and useful distinction. "Unlike molecular beacons, the discovered phenomenon enables tuning the force of DNA curling on the nanoparticle separately from the straightening force of input DNA. This leads to dramatically better sensitivity to the input," noted the study's first author Vladimir Cherkasov, a leading researcher at the Nanobiotechnology Lab, MIPT.

In their paper, the researchers demonstrate agents capable of detecting DNA concentrations as low as 30 femtomoles (30 billionths of a millionth of a mole) per liter, without DNA and/or signal amplification. The study's co-author Elizaveta Mochalova, a doctoral student at MIPT's Nanobiotechnology Lab, added: "We showed the sensitivity to be so high with a quite simple lateral flow assay, which is widely used in pregnancy tests. Unlike the existing DNA assays, such tests can be performed outside a clean laboratory setting and require no advanced equipment. This makes the technology well-suited to rapid infectious disease screening, food testing kits for home use, and similar things."

The authors of the paper have also showed the technology to be applicable to the design of smart nanoagents that would recognize cancer cells based on the concentration of small DNA in their microenvironment. Not long ago, small nucleic acids were thought to be just meaningless debris resulting from the recycling of larger functional molecules. However, small RNAs turned out to be key regulators of many processes in living cells. Biologists are currently identifying disease markers among these RNAs.

"Interestingly, the smaller the length of the nucleic acid to be detected, the more competitive our technology becomes," Nikitin commented. "We can fabricate ultrasensitive agents controlled by well-studied small RNAs that are 17 to 25 bases long. However, if we take sequences that are less than 10 nucleotides long, there are simply no technologies with comparable sensitivity."

"What's even more exciting is that our method enables probing the microenvironment of cells to determine whether shorter small RNAs are useful disease markers rather than the meaningless compounds they are commonly held to be due to the difficulties in their detection," the scientist added.

The newly developed technology offers prospects for genomics, both in terms of express point-of-care DNA assays and for developing next-generation therapeutic nanomaterials. The recent years have seen immense breakthroughs in genome research and editing, but the new technology could solve the problem that remains relevant: delivering drugs only to the cells with a particular microenvironment genetic profile.

The researchers plan to continue developing their technology. This includes future work at MIPT's recently established Center for Genomic Technologies and Bioinformatics.